Interview (Written): Michael Showalter

The director of The Big Sick, written by Kumail Nanjiani & Emily V. Gordon.

The movie The Big Sick, which wowed audiences at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and was picked up by Amazon Studios for an eye-popping $12M, is described as an “awkward true story”. Written by Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, here is how the movie’s official website describes the plot:

Based on the real-life courtship between Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, THE BIG SICK tells the story of Pakistan-born aspiring comedian Kumail (Nanjiani), who connects with grad student Emily (Zoe Kazan) after one of his standup sets. However, what they thought would be just a one-night stand blossoms into the real thing, which complicates the life that is expected of Kumail by his traditional Muslim parents.

When Emily is beset with a mystery illness, it forces Kumail to navigate the medical crisis with her parents, Beth and Terry (Holly Hunter and Ray Romano) who he’s never met, while dealing with the emotional tug-of-war between his family and his heart. THE BIG SICK is directed by Michael Showalter (HELLO MY NAME IS DORIS) and produced by Judd Apatow (TRAINWRECK, THIS IS 40) and Barry Mendel (TRAINWRECK, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS).

Kate Hagen, Director of Community at @theblcklst, interviews the film’s director Michael Showalter about bringing the story to cinematic life.

What was your experience like when you first read this script, and how did you collaborate with Emily [V. Gordon] and Kumail [Nanjiani] to bring their vision from page to screen?

I first read the script in the middle of the night — Kumail had asked me to read it as a favor: “hey, what do you think of this script that I wrote,” and I was genuinely blown away by it. I thought it was so earnest, and funny, and authentically told as a screenplay — they really were just putting themselves out there. I begged Kumail to let me direct the movie — “Do you have a director, please let it be me!” [laughs.] So I met with Judd [Apatow], Kumail, Emily, and Barry [Mendel], and told them what I thought about the movie, what I liked about it, and what I would do with it, how I envisioned it in my head. And then we started working on the movie together. We did a lot of development of the script and the characters, figuring out exactly what story we wanted to tell, what we wanted to include and what we didn’t want to include in the movie — I’ve known Kumail for a long time, so we have a pretty good working relationship, a strong rapport with each other, honest. We fight, but are also really creatively symbiotic, so it was a great experience. I loved working with Kumail and Emily.

Since THE BIG SICK is based on Kumail and Emily’s actual love story, how did you work with them and the rest of your cast on set to not only best serve their real story together, but to best serve the fictional version of their lives?

That was mostly my focus — making the best possible film. It never mattered to me so much what really happened — I knew that they cared about that, and I knew that that would be factored in — but for me, I just wanted to make sure that the movie was really entertaining. There were big ideas in this story that I knew would be extrapolated no matter what, and that’s what was most important to me — the universal appeal of this story. There were so many things that I know I related to when I first read it that made me think that this could be a good film, and I wanted to make sure that those were the things that we were focusing on.

Here is a trailer for The Big Sick:

For the rest of the interview, go here.

For The Big Sick movie website, go here.

Declare Your Independents! Go see The Big Sick. It opens in select theaters this week and goes wide in July.